Configuring playbook prompts

So far, all of our playbooks have had their data specified for them at runtime in variables we defined within the playbook. However, what if you actually want to obtain information from someone during a playbook run? Perhaps you want a user to select a version of a package to install? Or, perhaps you want to obtain a password from a user for an authentication task without storing it anywhere. (Although Ansible Vault can encrypt the data at rest, some companies may forbid the storing of passwords and other such credentials in tools that they have not evaluated.) Fortunately, for these instances (and many more), Ansible can prompt you for user input and store the input in a variable for future processing.

Let’s reuse the two host frontend inventories we defined at the beginning of this chapter. Now, let’s demonstrate how to capture data from users during a playbook run with a practical example:

1. Create a simple play definition in the...